


Second chance

by ditty (Triple_A)



Series: Fast Little Nonsenses [6]
Category: Detroit: Become Human (Video Game)
Genre: Abusive Parents, Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Angst with a Happy Ending, Backstory, Cole's death, Hurt/Comfort, Minor Character Death, i guess? i don't know, yea
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-30
Updated: 2019-09-30
Packaged: 2020-11-08 10:42:42
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,187
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20834141
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Triple_A/pseuds/ditty
Summary: Lieutenant Hank Anderson. Youngest police lieutenant in Detroit history. In charge of one of the biggest Ice busts ever.In Gavin's eyes, he's a hero for a different reason. He was expecting to end up...somewhere bad, probably, after his parents got arrested. Working a dead-end job until he died, maybe turning into a homeless junkie himself. Maybe even dying straight up, if it weren't for Hank.





	Second chance

**Author's Note:**

> Something like a backstory and a reconciliation
> 
> Lowkey inspired by sameside's art: https://same-side.tumblr.com/post/183423961022/you-cant-tell-me-they-werent-close-before-the

When Gavin was six, he made the resolute decision to become an astronaut. Wanted to see the stars, and whatever, without the light pollution and smog of the city. Wanted to get as far away as possible from Earth.  
  
And then he got to nineteen, thinking about what a stupid idea that was while lying on the roof of the one-floor building that was 'home'. It was the only part of the house he could escape to without the stench of Red Ice following him like a ghost, and the only place he couldn't be found by either of his parents in the peak of their haze-induced tempers.  
  
(The smell itself was almost enough to make him wish they'd just stuck with alcohol. At least alcohol didn't mean a choking haze that clogged the rooms. At least alcohol didn't mean strangers in the house.)  
  
It was evening. The sun was fading off, and the sky was streaked with vibrant, vivid colors from the chemical smoke pumped out of android factories. Come night, everything above him would be tinged gray and dark from that fog.  
  
And as the people below him yelled and cursed at each other in drug-drunk stupors, Gavin squinted to see if he could find any stars. There were none.  
  
Well, that settled that then. No astronaut Gav. No more stars.  
  
He reached into his pocket and withdrew his phone, something his cousin had given him ("Just in case," Eli had said, before going off and becoming the most influential Man of the Century,) and dialed 911.  
  
_"Hello, 911, what's your emergency?"_ Asked the operator.  
  
"There's two people at four-eleven Poplar Street. They're getting high off their asses on Ice. Hurry up." He says, shortly, and hangs up before the operator can get another word in, taking a deep breath. The air smelled like smoke from a gas stove and filth, and almost made him hack his lungs out.  
  
As he waits for the sound of sirens, and the flash of colored lights, he keeps looking upwards. And if he squinted, he thinks he could see something that might be winking back.

* * *

Lieutenant Hank Anderson. Youngest police lieutenant in Detroit history. In charge of one of the biggest Ice busts ever.  
  
In Gavin's eyes, he's a hero for a different reason. He was expecting to end up...somewhere bad, probably, after his parents got arrested. Working a dead-end job until he died, maybe turning into a homeless junkie himself. Maybe even dying straight up, if it weren't for Hank.  
  
"You got heart, kid. If I were you, I'd go to the academy." Hank had told him, offering him a shock blanket that Gavin staunchly refused.  
  
"Like I wanna become a fucking cop." He had snorted back, clambering into the shotgun seat of Hank's patrol car. Some forgotten, childish part of him was filled with a curious glee at being in a police car, complete with self-driving modulars, a tablet touch-screen, and so forth. Nineteen-year-old Gavin pretended not to care.  
  
"Yeah, well. The world needs some good cops. I think you'd make a good one." Hank shrugged, before climbing behind the nonexistent wheel and watching both Mr. and Mrs. Reed get shuffled away in the back of an ambulance, still cursing and screaming mutedly. "And you've seen the kinda shit this stuff can lead to. Maybe you can help prevent it."  
  
That had given Gavin pause. Prior to this, he had given up, not seeing any really interesting options. But he still had doubts. "I don't exactly have a clean school record."  
  
"What's the damage?"  
  
"Fights. Disagreements with the teachers." He didn't want to elaborate more, it wasn't like anyone believed his reasons. It was always written off as him being a 'troubled child'.  
  
"Over what?"  
  
"Why do you fucking care?"  
  
Hank just shrugged again. "Just wonderin'. I'm trying to help you out, I wasn't exactly a pristine high-schooler either." He presses a thumb to where the ignition would be, and the engine hums silently to life. "Tell you what, after you give your testimony at the station, I'll get you a proper meal and a bed and we can see about that academy thing in the morning."  
  
Gavin couldn't understand, he was a ratty, rather scrawny teenager who usually drew nothing but glares and suspicious side-eyes, with his too-large clothes and permanent grimace. "...Why are you being so nice to me?"  
  
The car starts off after the ambulances in front of them, and Hank is quiet for a moment. "Everyone deserves a second chance, kid. I know I'd want one if I were you, so why not offer it."

* * *

The first scene, _big_ crime scene that Gavin gets assigned to is Red Ice related, and at first Gavin is quietly delighted because that means he'll be working with Hank. His detective mentor, friend, and a better father figure than Gavin could've ever asked for, though he'd never admit it.  
  
But then he actually _gets_ to the scene, and sees the damage...and he feels a broiling disgust with himself for having ever been excited for this at all.  
  
It's a lot to take in. Red-Ice induced murder rampage, three dead, one broken android. Weapon of choice: combination between a point-four millimeter handgun and the blunt end of a lamp. The murderer, the father, was dead, choked by the foam in his throat and lying blue and face-down on the floor.  
  
Besides him is his wife (lamp) and son (handgun). The android, an AP700 model, is draped over the child with bullet holes in its back, but that doesn't distract at all from the horrific sight. Just draws more to it, actually, with how the blue mixes with red on the carpet.  
  
He does his analyses quickly, looking around the house more to avoid looking at the bodies. Letting Hank ask the questions and grabbing onto every word the forensic specialist relays like a lifeline. Trying to breath through his mouth to avoid that stench.  
  
When he finally makes it outside to sit on the curb, focusing on breathing deep and slow, it's watching how two androids roll out three body bags, one incredibly small, that does it. Makes him stand up and walk resolutely down the street to an empty lot, leaning against the brick wall and throwing up.  
  
Dammit. God, fucking, dammit.  
  
He wipes his mouth on the back of his hand, shuddering through the thin early-spring breeze that blows through his hoodie and trying to steady himself. It wasn't like he hadn't seen death before, but this-was a lot.  
  
Something taps his shoulder, and he flinches, bumping his head against the brick. But it's only Hank again, looking at him with concern.  
  
"You alright, kid?" He asks, quietly.  
  
"M'not a kid, Hank." Gavin grumbles back. He's not, he's twenty-something by now and almost pushing thirty, and definitely too old to be on the brink of tears in a street alley, and absolutely too old to be caught by his superior officer. "Leave me alone."  
  
"Lieutenant. And while you're barfing your guts out in a trash can? Absolutely not." The light tone does nothing for Gavin's mood, and he just looks away again. How could Hank handle this? He just had a son himself but still seemed as steady as ever. Sad, but unshaken. Unlike Gavin.  
  
He takes a deep breath. "Han-Lieutenant, can you *please* leave me alone? I just-I just need some time." He mumbles, clenching his teeth against the new, unpleasant taste in his mouth. At least it was combating the Ice smell that still lingered. Gunpowder and battery acid.  
  
Hank is silent from besides him, and Gavin wonders if he left, before something heavy and warm drapes over his shoulders, startling him again. He reaches over to grab it-his fingers find warm, worn leather.  
  
Hank's jacket.  
  
"The fuck?"  
  
Hank just shrugs from where he stands, looking out of place and ridiculous in the muted background of Detroit, with his loud striped shirt. "It's cold out, Gavin. You'll catch flu." The air around his mouth fogs as he looks up, squinting at the blue sky. "You know, I was the same. The first time I saw this kinda stuff."  
  
Gavin can hardly comprehend the words-_the_ Hank Anderson? Weak and shaky in an alley?- as he tugs the jacket tighter around himself. It smelled distinctly like a dog and, somewhere beneath that, something clean and sweet, that Gavin can't quite identify. "What do you mean?"  
  
"It shakes you up, seeing something like this. Especially the first time." He glances back at the coroner's van, pulling away from the street and following the other patrol cars back to the station. "You're no different, Gav. You know why they can't make android detectives?"  
  
"No?"  
  
Hank taps the side of his forehead. "Can't emote. Can't sympathize. They can guess and predict and pretend, but in the end they can't look at a scene like that and understand the gravity of it."  
  
"I don't understand."  
  
"It's okay to feel things, kid. It's not weakness." There's a sad little smile on his face again. "It's always the roughest the first time around. I'd know."  
  
As if Gavin could imagine Hank in his place at this moment. He snorts, the idea nearly as preposterous in his mind's eye as Hank's loud shirt.  
  
"It's true." He shrugs. "The first case I was on, a young woman was murdered by her ex. It didn't even seem like an a crime of passion either, not with the way it was so messy and clearly taken time with. It haunted me." He takes a deep breath, a fog around his mouth. "I didn't want to cry in front of the others, but I did when I got home. I couldn't sleep. Eating got hard, I always felt sick. In the end, I stayed over at Jeff's place for a few nights because being alone at night was overwhelming."  
  
Gavin doesn't know what to say, so he stays silent and listens to Hank talk. Listens to the descriptions of the first night he stayed with Jeff, just laughing and chatting as if they weren't cops. How the next day he agreed to a police-offered therapy session.  
  
"It didn't always get better. Didn't always get easier. But I figured out how to deal with it." Hank smiles again. "I help others deal with it too, sometimes. You're no exception."  
  
"I don't need help," Gavin mutters, but the protest sounds pathetic even to himself. Hank's eyebrow cocks.  
  
"Then come with me anyways. I find it's always good to have someone around after these sort of things, and I could do with a drinking buddy tonight. You're old enough, right?"  
  
Gavin wants to cry. He's not even sure why, but he guesses it's something between the horror from the crime and Hank's openness, willingness to help, something he rarely had offered to him.  
  
He turns away quickly and scrubs futilely at his eyes with the elbow of the jacket, biting savagely at the inside of his cheek to keep from breaking into full-blown sobs. "Yeah...okay." He mumbles, and he's relieved at how his voice doesn't break.  
  
Hank pats him on the back. "Come on. They're waiting for us at the station."  
  
Gavin lets himself be led back to the car, sits back down in the same seat he occupied a few years prior, when he was nineteen. It's a rare cloudless day in Detroit, and the sun is bright and warm on his face through the window.

* * *

Like so many tragedies, it starts with a death.  
  
An unfair one.  
  
Things change with it. Hank's sleek patrol car is replaced by a dented, second-hand truck. Gavin stops trying to give back the jacket. The rookies at first-time crime scenes now drink alone, and so does Hank.  
  
Fittingly, there was rain at the funeral, heavy and dark and without a single shred of light through the gray clouds. And it stays for years, following them.

* * *

"You need to stop doing this." He says as he wrestles the gun from Hank's trembling hands. The older man stinks of booze and sweat, and it conjures memories of Gavin's old house years ago, years before Ice and detectives and androids and self-driving cars-  
  
Hank just grunts and reaches for the bottle of jack on the table, almost empty. "Fffuck do you wan'? Get outta here." He slurs, and if this had been the first time, Gavin's heart would've broken at the sight. By the double digits, he had grown numb in the worst way possible.  
  
"Hank, you need _help_. Please, let me just-"  
  
"Din't I say to fuck off?!" He shoves weakly as Gavin hauls an arm around his shoulders to drag Hank to the bedroom. "Don't *need* ya fucking help, just leave me the fuuuck alone."  
  
"Absolutely not." He dumps Hank on the bed, nearly tripping in the process. The floor is littered with clothes and trash and empty bottles, clinking musically around his feet and reflecting the lights from the hallway. "I'm calling the department shrink. Fowler agrees with me, you need to go talk to someone."  
  
"Like who? You? Fuckin' backstreet kid?" He snorts, and Gavin grits his teeth. He's heard enough of this brand of onslaught, and he refuses to let it get to him. Not from Hank. "Yeah, bet this cuts real deep for you. What, think you're an expert on this shit?"  
  
"Hank, you're drunk."  
  
"I'm drunk, I'm drunk, and thank fuck for it." He says in a sing-song, lurching into a sitting position, his hand still clutching that empty bottle. In that instant, Gavin feels an inexplicable surge, a familiar roaring anger. "Do me a favor and don't preach to me that bullshit. You can do that right? After everything I've done for you?"  
  
Gavin sees red, and he shuts his eyes and takes a deep breath. The gun is still in his head, sharp metal imprinting itself in his palm. The smell of alcohol was strong in this room, it filled the entire house.  
  
"Don't give me that shit. I'm sick of hearing it, you fucking brat."  
  
The last comment fills him with irrational anger, and Gavin thinks he hates him, really does hate him and the way he was so crippled by his grief, so torn up by it he let it kill him. Hating him with the same hate he reserved for his parents, but this wasn't something he could call 911 on and whisk away. Things had changed.  
  
So instead he closes the door. Sumo glances up from where he lays in the hallway, his bowl spilling over with food clumsily dumped in from god-knows-when. Gavin replaces the food, then retrieves the revolver and shakes out the single bullet and pockets it, then fills a glass with water and sets it on the table instead.  
  
He leaves the light on in Hank's house, a sort of pettiness to light up the lawn as he walks to his car.

* * *

Along comes Connor.  
  
Things change again.  
  
Gavin tries not to be bitter, as he watches Hank change, not quite the same but getting a new start. Getting better.  
  
Gavin is not bitter.  
  
(But he is so very much bitter.)

* * *

It doesn't happen face to face, because of course it doesn't. Both of them are too enmired in their own shame and pride to do that.  
  
It happens with a text. A hesitant, "r u awake?" text from Hank that escalates into short talks, careful, poorly worded remarks from Hank and curt responses from Gavin.  
  
And then his phone begins to ring, and Gavin feels everything (confusion, anger, a quiet relief) and then nothing all at once, before he hits the green call button at the third buzz.  
  
"...Hello?"  
  
"What." Gavin pulls himself out of bed and drags himself to the living room. This was not the kind of conversation he wanted to have lying down, and he settles heavily onto the couch. "It's three AM."  
  
"Neither of us work tomorrow."  
  
"Some of us have shit to do." He bites back. "What do you want?"  
  
For a moment, he can't hear anything, and he's about to hang up when Hank says, in the quietest of voices: "I'm sorry."  
  
It freezes him. He's not sure if he heard right. "What?"  
  
"I'm sorry. I-Gavin, I was not a good person the past couple of years." There's a deep sigh over the phone. "I just-I don't know why I thought this was a good idea, to call you now. Shit. Never mind, I'll call you back tomorro-"  
  
"No, no, no. I'm awake. Talk to me." He pulls the curtains and cracks a window, letting the cool night breeze in. It's a curiously clear night in Detroit. The shutdown of android factories killed most of the chemical clouds that usually laced the sky, though light pollution still existed. A few clouds, lingering from the previous days rain, are scattered against dark blue.  
  
Hank takes a deep breath. "Gavin, listen, I. I'm really sorry for everything I did the past couple of years. It was-I got caught up in grieving and blaming my grief on androids and hating everything under the sun."  
  
Gavin doesn't say anything. So Hank keeps talking, and Gavin just listens to him talk about everything. Hearing what had happened from an android surgeon in a blank voice. Seething in his own poisonous hate for years and years and turning away anyone who tried to help, wishing for death at every turn. Finally being able to see something that wasn't just plastic and empty thought. Therapy sessions. Reconcile. Recovery.  
  
Once or twice, he breaks off with tears in his voice, and Gavin stays silent.  
  
"And, I just. It wasn't fair to take it out on you. Now when you were following my own damn advice." Hank chuckles, sniffs. "God, you had every right to hate me. I guess you still do. I can't say that my grief was an excuse for all of it."  
  
"It's not." Gavin says. His voice sounds distant and detached, slow and unsure of what to say except the truth. "I think I hated you for doing the exact shit you...I guess saved me from. And I wanted to keep hating you when Connor came along."  
  
"What stopped you?"  
  
He laughs at that, and it startles him as much as it startles Bast from where she slept to glare at him. "I don't know. Some bullshit about second chances, or whatever."  
  
Hank is quiet for a moment, and then laughs too.  
  
"What kind of cheesy bastard told you that?"  
  
"The cheesiest." Gavin grins, and he knows Hank is smirking too.  
  
"Yeah, well. I bet he's not allowed to drink alone anymore."  
  
"Is this an invitation?"  
  
"I could do with a drinking buddy, I think you're old enough, right kid?"  
  
Gavin laughs again, this time choked with a soft sob he muffles in his throat. There are tears cooling on his cheeks. The breeze smells clean, like rain.  
  
"Yeah, I think so."  
  
Gavin looks up at the sky, and if he squints, he thinks he can see something winking back.

**Author's Note:**

> man,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,idk there's no rhyme or reason behind this.
> 
> this isn't my best or proudest work but it's honest and it made people cry on the [new era](https://discord.gg/4BUz4Fz) discord
> 
> high school is a pain and a drag and honestly i don't need it rn but im gonna try and update more in the spooky season, especially for [finding sanctum](https://archiveofourown.org/works/18510139) and [no change](https://archiveofourown.org/works/18180059) but we'll see how that goes


End file.
